1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrophotographic apparatus cartridge for high speed printing and, more specifically, to a cartridge that increases the print speed in an electrophotographic apparatus by increasing the effective printing height of the cartridge.
2. Background Art
With the greater amounts of information being generated by computers, the development of printer technology has become increasingly important. One popular type of printer is the ink-jet printer. There are two types of ink-jet printers, the continuous jet type and the drop on demand type of ink jet printer. The continuous ink-jet printers project a continuous spray of ink drops from a small nozzle toward a recording medium. In contrast, the drop on demand ink-jet printers release droplets in response to signals from a controller. The controller causes changes in the pressure within the ink storage chamber of the printer cartridge resulting in a succession of droplets being ejected. Many advancements have been made in ink-jet technology due to continuing efforts to increase printer speed and to improve the resolution of printed images. There are many methods for increasing the print speed of an electrophotographic apparatus.
Generally, an ink-jet cartridge prints by jetting ink onto a medium of cut paper while moving in a rectilinear reciprocating fashion. I have observed that by increasing the printing height of a print head the speed of a printer can be increased. This, however, results in the resolution of the electrophotographic apparatus being decreased. In addition, the production of print heads having a greater printing height increases the probability of errors made in the nozzle spacing during manufacturing. Currently, many print heads are manufactured using a lithography process. This process can result in errors that cause improper intervals to be formed between nozzles on the cartridge. For example, an ink-jet print head cartridge that has a printing height of 1 inch and a resolution of 600 dots per inch, hereinafter referred to as "dpi", may be manufactured with 600 ink jetting chambers, or nozzles, that are formed on one print head. If one of the nozzles is deformed, then the entire print head must be discarded. This results in a waste of materials and in the re treading of manufacturing production lines to produce cartridges that have a higher number of nozzles when a producer desires to produce a cartridge with an increased number of nozzles.
As such, I believe that it may be possible to improve on the contemporary art by providing a cartridge for an electrophotographic apparatus that does not require the re-treading of production lines to accommodate an increase in the number of nozzles desired on a cartridge, that does not increase the complexity required to produce print heads, that increases the printing height of the cartridge, that increases the printing speed of an electrophotographic apparatus, and that does not require significant changes to existing manufacturing methods to produce.